Israeli attack on Rafah kills 22, as US approves aid for Israel and Palestinians

(Patria) - Israeli attacks on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said on Sunday, as the United States is on track to approve billions of dollars in additional military aid to Israel, its close ally.

Israel carries out air strikes on Rafah almost daily, where more than half of Gaza's 2.3 million population has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also pledged to expand its ground offensive against Hamas into the city on the border with Egypt despite calls for restraint, including from the United States.

“In the coming days, we will increase political and military pressure on Hamas because that is the only way to bring back our hostages and achieve victory. We will soon deliver more painful blows to Hamas,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the first Israeli strike in Rafah, a man, his wife and their three-year-old child were killed, a nearby Kuwaiti hospital that received the bodies announced. The woman was pregnant, and doctors saved the baby, the hospital said. In another strike, seventeen children and two women from an extended family were killed.

The war between Israel and Hamas has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, at least two-thirds of whom are children and women. About 80% of the population has fled to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave. The war was triggered by an October 7 attack on southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 hostages. Israel says militants still hold about 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.

A $26 billion aid package approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday includes about $9 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza, which experts say is on the brink of starvation. The U.S. Senate could pass the package as early as Tuesday, and President Joe Biden has pledged to sign it immediately.

Israeli troops killed two Palestinians who the army says attacked a checkpoint with a knife and pistol near the southern West Bank city of Hebron early Sunday morning. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said the two killed were 18 and 19 years old, from the same family. No Israeli soldiers were injured, the army said. Later, the army said its forces killed a 43-year-old Palestinian woman after she attempted to stab a soldier in the northern West Bank near the settlement of Beka’ot.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said it recovered fourteen bodies after an Israeli raid in the Nur Shams urban refugee camp in the West Bank that began late Thursday. Among the dead were three militants from the Islamic Jihad group and a fifteen-year-old. The army said it killed fourteen militants and arrested eight suspects. Ten Israeli soldiers and one border policeman were injured.

In a separate incident in the West Bank, an Israeli was injured in an explosion on Sunday, the Magen David Adom rescue service said. Video circulating online shows a man approaching a Palestinian flag planted in a field. When he strikes it, it appears to detonate an explosive device.

At least 469 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. Most were killed during Israeli military raids or violent protests.